Hogle Zoo and more

So yesterday we braved the heat once again to go out. Our destination this time... Utah's Hogle Zoo. Mark left me the car so we had our a/c and no time tables to worry about which was nice. We spent 5hrs at the zoo in all and had a great time. It's not as b ig as the San Francisco zoo and I found a lot of the enclosures to be on the small side of what we are used too but the layout was nice and we were able to see some animals we don't have near us such as the red panda and gray wolf (yes, that would be me who was on the news trying to figure out how to get him out to take home with me, why do you ask?). We rode the "choo-choo" and played in the park. We saw the Amur Tiger (formerly the Siberian Tiger) and the Amur Leopard and watched the black footed penguins swim. We saw tons of monkeys including the Capuchin and Golden Tamarin and a bunch of others. We even got to pet the fur of one that they had outside. We got to see elephants (which we no longer have in SF) as well as cougars, the Pallas Cat, and other big cats whose names escape me. We saw the bat-eared fox (very cute), scorpions, and a lot of snakes in the reptile and small animal house (not as many spiders as SF tho, not that I'm complaining any LOL).

The boys favorite animals were:
Christopher - Red Panda
Matthew - penguins, tigers, leopard, white alligator, red panda
Jonathan - Red Panda (yes, this was a surprise but they are cute and cuddly and live in trees so maybe not such a big surprise after all)
Nico - Black footed penguins (it's what finally calmed him down after an hour long meltdown because mean mommy wouldn't buy ice cream right after buying a slushie)
Mommy - Gray Wolf, Red Panda, Tiger, Leopard

On our way out you know we had to stop at the store and scored on a bunch of fun books for the three younger ones, many which will end up in Hanukkah bags and a few will be used for preschool for Nico.

After dinner we had a surprise for the boys which we refused to reveal ahead of time (mean parents that we are). We headed out and started walking in a direction that we had yet to travel in...until we hit the movie theater at the mall and bought tickets for Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Fun movie even if I'm not in love with that animation style but the plot was good and everyone but Nico had a good time. He just wanted to kick and run around but we managed to convince him to at least stay in my lap the whole time. Just wish candy had the same magic powers to keep him still as it used to.